It is often difficult to identify an historic opportunity and seize the moment, however the US and its Allies may realize that it could be time to focus on forging an agreement for peaceful co-existence and cooperation even among 'unfriendly nations' that share a more important common goal - fighting terrorism and total chaos.

Ernst, 44, is the Junior Senator for Iowa, elected in the recent midterms, having served as a State Senator prior to this. Despite lacking political experience in the Capitol and in frontline politics generally, she checks multiple boxes for a potential running-mate in 2016.

I 100% agree with the lambasting and jokes surrounding these comments - the comments embody a reality so screwed up we have to throw our hands up and laugh to keep from crying. But we can't forget comments like this also fuels that reality, that today's violent race and religious fault-lines are created by comments like these and the damage they do.

Whether he fell on his sword or was pushed, Chuck Hagel's departure is the latest in a series of foreign policy missteps. It leaves the administration bereft of a Veteran Secretary of Defense at the most dangerous time in recent memory.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of this Democratic ouster could be Hillary Clinton. If the Republicans cannot legislate and deliver, HRC could run against a failed Republican Congress and win. Is Hillary the answer in 2016 as she almost was in 2008?

Whether Obama has turned out to be a weak and ineffective President is a proposition we can debate, but not on the basis of yesterday's elections. True, the President will no longer dominate the domestic political agenda. On that question, the elections leave no room for doubt. At home, Obama is indeed a lame duck.

There have been a rash of outrageous breaches of the public trust relating to national and international security including: Failure of the US Secret Service to protect the President and the First Family. Failure of the Dallas Hospital and federal, state and local officials to initially detect the first person in the US infected with ebola...

Is it the loss of a Democrat majority in the House? The Republicans stubbornness and inability to compromise? The continuous barriers against Obama's attempts to pass certain Acts? Or is it because the House is filing a law suit against him? (Yes really). Clearly all of these things coupled together worsen the situation, but Obama's main problem is that he's just too nice to be President.

For too long, African Americans, Black and Asian Britons have felt targeted... In the USA, great steps towards racial equality have been made over the decades. In spite of this, time and time again we hear of fatal shootings between the white and the black populations... How many deaths will it take for something to be done? For things to change?

White and Black Americans have fought in one way or another, side by side in the Union Army, in World War I and II, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, only to return to their own separate neighborhoods, separate houses of worship and their own separate lives. Black and White Americans, for the most part, simply do not live in the same society and do not see the world around them in the same way.

A few years ago, Sarah Palin may have asked the President how that whole hopey, changey, out of Iraqey thing was going, but at the minute she seems to be too busy having an epic battle with Elizabeth Warren.

Barack Obama's now rather famous phrase from the end of last week is quite something... Torture is a worldwide scourge, affecting three-quarters of the world. Acknowledging that it's as wrong when used against "terrorism suspects" as it is against political opponents or even minor criminal suspects is... well, progress.

As the global landscape rapidly changes Americans are re-examining their role in the world... America and its people may be battle weary of shouldering the cost and the burden of "keeping" or as some may say "disrupting" world peace - it is after all a weighty responsibility to be so engaged.

Ed Miliband's visit to Washington DC provides a timely reminder of the new post-crash challenges faced by both our nations and our progressive movements. But beyond that, it is an opportunity for two leaders who both understand that economic growth comes from not the top down, but the middle out, and who share with common values, to share ideas on how to meet these challenges.

A year later and the black flags of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS), currently fluttering across lands from from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala north-east of Baghdad, have once again pushed the noxious issue of intervention to the forefront of the US foreign policy debate - a discourse that is further dividing an already fractured Republican Party, with the question of action versus non-action likely to run all the way to the 2016 election.

Conventional wisdom, steeped as it is in years of de facto political homogeneity, would have you know that the 'War on Terror', as that nasty man George Bush grandly called it, was either misguided, pointless or actively detrimental towards the end it was claimed to champion.

An all out war in the Middle-East, creating more failed states, will not only effect the US economy, it is also likely to pose a real safety risk to US citizens both here and abroad as terrorists entities like ISIS pledge to annihilate those who do not follow their path to salvation.

In the long term, both Jordan and Israel will structure their partnership to be one that is devoid of any possible peril... Living apart together, Israel and Jordan are two partners that won't welcome the conflict coming closer to home.